In this episode, key lessons emerge from an 11-hour live event with Alex Hormozi focused on the critical $1-3M revenue range where most businesses plateau. The session included 10 fireside chats with top affiliates and extensive Q&A, revealing why operators get trapped at this level and what’s required to break through to $10M+ businesses.
Key Takeaways:
- The $1-3M Swamp Exists Because Operators Won’t Kill What’s Working Most entrepreneurs get stuck because they’ve built something comfortable enough to survive on but introducing the uncertainty needed to reach $10M feels too risky to their proven model.
- 80% Time on Your Main Constraint or Stay Stuck Breaking past $3M requires brutal focus—identifying your single biggest constraint from the Mozi Six framework and dedicating 80% of your time there while letting other fires burn.
- Multiple Businesses Kill Your Exit Multiple Running separate businesses with different marketing channels, sales processes, and customer avatars caps long-term potential—even Elon Musk is a one-of-one exception, while Bezos, Zuck, and Gates all stayed focused on one company.
- You Are the Talent Until $10M Revenue Below $10M top-line revenue with 15-20% net margins, it’s nearly impossible to recruit star talent—bootstrapped businesses must accept the founder drives growth until reaching scale that attracts A-players.
- Stars Track Stars Across Their Entire Careers Once you identify what A-level talent looks like through volume hiring (the only way to learn), those stars will orbit your reputation for decades and return when you’re building something compelling.
Listen to hear Hormozi’s complete framework on escaping the most dangerous revenue range in entrepreneurship.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious. Let’s jump back into my notes from the a hundred million, a hundred million dollar money model launch affiliate, a Hormozi event, again, 11 straight hours with Alex Hormozi life-changing event, never taken more notes at any event besides this one. So,
You know, if you want more of the additional takeaways and you know, overall first impressions, did, you know, some thoughts on that on previous podcasts is probably won’t be the last podcast either. So just to jump back into the, follow on lessons here again, the, set up, if you hadn’t listened to those previous pods was that most of the day was spent within, you know, 10 fireside chat, sessions.
with the top 10 affiliates, getting one-on-one time with Alex. And then there was, you know, probably close to three hours-ish of just audience open mic time. You know, we had to submit questions before, so just a grab bag of just Q &A to Alex. So with all that in mind, I’m jumping back into notes here from some of these fireside chats. And, you know, one of these key questions was,
You know, again, a number of the entrepreneurs there, like we were in pretty similar setups of like, you know, it’s that really that one to $3 million swamp range, like top line revenue between like one to 3 million bucks. Like there’s so many of us there, I include myself where, you know, a number of businesses are just able to grind their way to numbers like that, which is like not not easy to do again. Most businesses fail within their first year and like it
nowhere close to even sniffing a million bucks. So like you have to pat yourself on the back to even get to that level. But you know, to get beyond there, because it’s right at that level where it’s like, hey, you’ve proven that you can be a small business operator, you can be an entrepreneur and be able to like kind of sustain the business and probably support yourself enough with, you know, assuming you’re running like at least
you know, 15 to 20 % net profit on that business. Like it’s probably enough to at least support yourself and your family at a minimum. And so, you know, at that level, it’s like, okay, you made it, but in order to get to the next level, what really needs to change in order to push, push past the boundaries and push past the swamp?
to get to that next level. And part of that is just psychological too. Cause like I just mentioned, it’s like, okay, you’ve done enough to kind of prove yourself as a business operator. But as Alex was saying, it’s just, there’s so many folks who get stuck right around there, even more than likely less than a million bucks is because they found something that had started to work.
So they don’t want to let that go. And you know, don’t want to deal with, mean, what, what human really just like loves just uncertainty all like we hate it, right? Like it’s just, you know, look at when there’s tons of uncertainty in the air, look what happens with stock market, the economy, like everybody starts to tighten up when you’re, not sure where, where the shoe is going to drop. And so it’s just easier to stay or, know, for those entrepreneurs at that level, like it’s just easier to stay where they are. It’s like, okay.
got something comfortable going here. I know I could be doing more, but I really don’t want to risk what’s already working. So like that’s why a lot of folks will get stuck. And, you know, this comes back to that main constraint theory of again, the six, you know, the mozy six, we’re like, why can’t you be doing more of, you know, various parts of your business? You know, like are you tracking metrics properly? Is your market okay? Your model.
Are you solving like the money issue, which again is related to leads sales or LTV lifetime value of the customer and then a manpower issue. Like one of those is your core constraint. And so it’s like, yeah, to get to that, you know, $10 million number beyond like you have to be able to focus and get at least 80 % of your time on that main constraint. Just let the other fires burn and just keep pushing to solve that main constraint. That’s the only way.
you’re going to be able to get past that swamp and get past that level. you can’t just, know, again, we all hear the quotes, like what got you here won’t get you there. But like few people actually embody that and be able to take that extra step further because it’s just, yeah, it introduces uncertainty. You might not, you might not make it. You’d like, that’s just part of entrepreneurship, right? It’s like, it’s just a constant sprint. You say it’s a marathon, but it’s like,
You kind of have to be sprinting for the most part. really get off the ground for long time and find other routes to move forward. It’s not easy to solve the game of business. People can say, yeah, it’s easier to be in business nowadays compared to in the past for whatever reason. Like, A, didn’t have the internet, you didn’t have the reach, or you had to host your own website and it costs like 10, 15 grand a month just to do that.
Um, so like there’s a lot of rationality. was like, it’s never been easier, um, or simpler rather to be in an entrepreneur and a business owner. And that part I could agree with, but at the same time is that the game. It like infinitely evolves, right? Because tomorrow is a step forward than, than today and compared to yesterday and so forth. And like, you know, even killer business operators from 50 years ago, like
you know, how many of them just fell off or like those, you know, business strategies aren’t going to be as applicable today just because the game keeps leveling up and you have to have such a, you know, more solid base of knowledge and wisdom, just to succeed and continue to earn money anyway. So, like there’s just inevitable uncertainty. You’re just never, you’re going to have to continue to grow and face that in order to get to the next step. so I really liked that piece. then, yeah, this is.
like such critical insights for me personally as well. And there’s so many entrepreneurs there. was just like, again, we’re a lot of us are just visionaries and, you know, I think just part of being a business owner and entrepreneur especially is like inevitably taking on more than we can reliably do. Or we always think we have more capacity than we don’t like that. just, but part of what’s, you know, allowed us to kind of pursue a crazier life path anyway.
And, you know, so many folks who are at this event were just, hey, you know, I have an agency here, but then I’m also coaching, you know, other, like I have a coaching business that’s helping coach other agencies to get back bigger. Or, you know, some of these folks, yeah, like I can start up.
another software product around what we’re doing here. Like that’s just another avenue that we can pursue. see the potential for just, you know, continue to expand our reach, expand our reach. you know, critically, yeah, there was just, there were a number of entrepreneurs both within the fireside chats and that’s like the lot, the open mic that we’re just dealing with, with things like that. It’s a ton of different examples, which I’ll…
skip over for the sake of speed here. And what Alex really pointed out, and anybody who’s listened to Alex for even a small amount of time, like he’ll say, focus, it’s the number one thing. That’s what he has to keep reminding himself of constantly as well. He has a huge list of just big ideas that just can’t pursue because it’s gonna destroy their main.
their main route of business. And yeah, you could point to like Alex, where he had, you know, the gym launch company, then he had supplements and he had the software related to gym operators. And it’s like, well, yeah, you did multiple businesses. And he’s like, yeah, but like that’s not necessarily a recommended pet. Like he’s like, if I had just focused on that one business, like just focus on gym launch, like the exit play would have at least been the same, maybe bigger by just focusing on one.
And like most people who have run multiple businesses, like either say they have regretted doing that, even if they have exited out of it. Or like it just inevitably kind of caps their longer term potential because they’re just balancing between building, you know, more than one business and you just have to like.
jump from one to the other to put out fires as they came up. And, you know, related to this, because like sometimes it’s a fine line, right? It’s like, okay, you know, is there just two or more different product lines within your business, which is fine because it’s like, yeah, you want multiple bites at the Apple to earn revenue or is it like two unrelated businesses? So
you know, a way to break it down. I mean, first within like our funding business here, you slam capital. like we could have regular, you know, funding deals were taken down a hundred percent of the capital, the equity in the deal, split profits on the backend. Sometimes we’ll do some transactional funding as well too. Like that’s a different, it’s a different product, but it’s within our, you know, core competency, our core business. Like it doesn’t.
you know, really shift our marketing or our sales channels to like bring those same type of leave is just another way to make money, with a different type of product or service that we’re offering here. and so like Alex will mention this, like, Hey, you really have to ask yourself, like, do the activities of each product line, change your day to day operations?
and so he’ll, you know, he was mentioning in some of his businesses where it was like, yeah, they had, you know, a bunch of affiliate products that was earning them a good amount of income, but like they built it into their primary core core offer checkout process. And I think he’s remarked about this in, the, some of his books, or he’s like, he had an employee as they were closing sales for their core offer.
You know, they would have this employee just like walk the client, you know, know, new client through all of their affiliates. Like, yeah, if you’re going to sign up for this, then like, makes sense to do this and this and this. And so it’s like walk them through the clicks and based on that conversion cycle, you know, the money earned from that was already paying for that employee. Fortunately. So you like, you turn a law center into a profit center.
And like, it doesn’t change the operations. Like they’re still closing their main product so they can throw that piece on because it’s, all within the flow of day-to-day operations. it, whereas Alex is like, you know, but the difference between like product lines and other businesses, like if you have a totally separate, marketing channels, sales channels, different customer avatars, that’s
you know, where, where it starts like getting a lot riskier. And it’s just like, you know, it’s just frankly out of reach for 99 % of people to be able to successfully pull that off. And I think so many, so many of us like get this in our heads because it’s like, okay, when you think of, you know, regards politics, whatever, but like, you know, it’s a larger than life personality. Like a lot of folks will point to Eli. It’s like, yeah, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Neuralink and X.
So it’s like, somebody can do it there, know, richest man in the world. but you know, that’s it’s like, dude, do you know anybody else who has done like anything like that? He’s kind of like a one in one of one. And we know there’s like, you know, you got to take the whole package with that. Like, do you want that lifestyle? Like really, would you trade your spots with with you on to like, you know, again, not a judgment on the lifestyle. It could be for you, but like to have
you know, multiple different, you know, failed relationships, seemingly, you know, not seeing kids like whole but like it’s like a whole, you know, and seemingly like just difficult personal relationships, professional one, like it’s, it’s a lot, right? Like not everybody would sign up for that. and so you have to be willing to take the full package if you even had the capability. And so far we haven’t seen anybody like, like people think they can be Elon, but like so far there’s only been one, one Elon, right?
Whereas like, even if you look at all the other biggest companies out there that have just infinite resources, you know, Zuck has stuck with Meta, know, Bill Gates and then Walmart, so like they just focused on Microsoft, Bezos, like it was just Amazon, right? Like it picked one thing with literally billions, trillions of dollars at this point. And they stay focused on one company, even with, you know, Hermosy here too, you know, again.
way more resources than we can ever imagine. Like he is just focused on acquisition.com. It’s not multiple businesses, but they have multiple product lines. Like they’ll have their private equity set up. They’ll have their venture capital. But even that it’s like delegated out to the right teams so that it doesn’t require as much split focus from Alex himself to where, you know, like the VC face, like he, just, you know, Hey, here’s, um, think like 2 million bucks a year or something is, is, what,
You know, those grants like, just, hey, he delegated this out, give it to, you know, companies you think are going to do well, great. There’s a real estate arm, which like, they’ll look at like 50 to $60 million type properties. And Alex will get involved at the very end for like approval on that. I huge purchases, but it’s like, you know, arms of the business that are looking at different assets. Like it’s a whole, you know, investment firm, right? So.
but they’re just focused on, on their, you know, one core business because like all the product lines, all have some, you know, relation, to each other, or they’re able to delegate out to certain departments, to really make sure that, that they’re aligned there. So, I thought that was just exceptionally helpful to keep in mind because like, it’s just, you know, I make that mistake all the time. And, you know, a number of.
Other operators will will do so as well, too Clearly that that was the case at this live Live event and again to wrap up this Fireside chat here again. We’re going a little lot like the end. Is this good content? Well, you can comment on this so you want to hear more like this is
This was, yeah, 11 straight hours with Alex Hermosy, right? Like it’s jam packed with valuable business knowledge. And so, you the other piece that I noted down related to this topic, again, within that like one to $3 million swamp typically, and you know, so many people are like, yeah, they want to remove themselves more from the business. Yeah, it’s scale, get the passive income and so on. It’s just not realistic for most businesses. Like if you are a sub $10 million business,
like Hermosa routinely put this out, it’s like, you are the talent. Like until you get to that level, like it’s just, it’s very hard to recruit star talent below that type of top line revenue, assuming kind of like standard. Every industry is different, but like assuming again, you’re getting at least like 15, 20 % net margins, like good amount of gross profit, you know, hopefully like north of 70 to 80 % of gross margin on a business like this.
And you still need to get to like 10 mil top line even with that mind to like really higher star players who can continue to grow the business that It’s going to require at levels like that To get to get to those higher stages And yes, there’s always the avenue. Yeah, you could raise capital or maybe you just have a whole bunch of cash reserves But you could afford a higher star talent That isn’t just being
know, bootstrap from the company. But again, if you look at the stats, mean, there’s a bare handful of companies that like ever, you know, raise earlier startup capital, like well below 10%, maybe below 5%. Or, and yeah, a lot of folks aren’t just, you know, sitting on, you know, hundreds of thousands, billions of dollars, like unless you’ve already been successfully for it and all that. And so, yeah, that’s entirely possible. You can do that.
sort of reason, you know, VC system and accelerators and all that exists, but like most folks are bootstrapping. if you’re doing that, you know, you’ve just got to sit tight and like build a larger business before you can like, you take a step back and, you know, be more passive with it. Like that’s just the reality. and. You know, and that’s part of the swamp too, right? Like it’s just, you know, it would, if you have limited margin, it’s like.
You know you either have to work a lot harder yourself to get to that 10 million dollar level so you can hire more star talent or you have to give up like almost all of the profit you’re bringing in To bring in star talent to get to the next level That’s why so many people get stuck in the swamp because you get stuck between that rock and hard place That’s really really difficult to push out of But you know at these higher levels like if you can start attracting real stars here real a level talent
Like Alex has pointed out is that you know stars stick around like they you know stars and a level players Like they will keep tabs Maybe it’s not necessarily publicly but they will they will pay attention. Okay. Hey, you’re somebody building something really cool or like yeah I but you know join this team and maybe they shifted around, you know did something else or maybe like the company
You know, exited or failed, whatever, but it’s like, Hey, there’s a good experience here. Like I like working with this team. and like they’ll, they’ll be available because like once stars figure out, You know, that, that you’re a legit player, like they will stick around your, your orbit, and probably vice versa, for kind of the rest of, of your professional careers. So it’s like, but you know, as Alex was pointing out, it’s like you.
You really don’t know what stars look like until you’ve just worked through so many hires and you know, just misfires like you just you kind of It’s a hard skill to teach it’s like every industry is different too And you’re gonna have like one bet higher than you hire someone else and they’re like equally as bad or you know Three four, maybe five and then until you finally found. Ooh, this is what an a player looks like and once you start
like figuring out, here’s what may player is for this particular position. cause like it could be different for sales channels versus marketing and so forth. then you can start, pattern matching more over time. You’re like, I can recognize this archetype. This is more of a player, that I can bring into this type of role because like I’ve seen this before, but you just, you just have to like work through a bunch of tough buyers. but didn’t work out in order to.
sort that out. Like there’s no easy way around. Like it just wraps, right? Same with everything, know, volume negates luck. So that’s what you have to just keep on doing. And like Alex was pointing out, like, you know, especially on sales channels, like he’ll know every single tier of sales, like, you know, standard, you know, in, in, in, inbound sales rep to director of sales, to VP of sales, et cetera. Like he just knows what to look for for those positions now. Like what does star level talent look like?
Within that hierarchy and like you only get that By just you know continuing to make progress. So I think that’s a good pause point here again I’m getting so much out of this just by Collecting my thoughts around these these notes here repeating them back to you all gonna be listening to these again Just personally, so I hope you’re getting just as much value if not more By tuning in here
Like, you just, but I’m down to it, right? Like, I mean, like this is, this is great stuff. Like again, there’s a reason Hermosy has made so much money. It’s because the guys are super, super focused and knows what he’s talking about. So with that in mind, serious land dot capital for end of year funding needs, 50K minimum buy price, land daily diligence, Facebook group for zero cost review land deals.
Subscribe and share. I’ll be back with more Hormozi notes into this next week here. We’ll just keep running through it. Take care everybody. Bye.
